Scout to Go Live

The final changes have been made to go ahead and launch our new discovery service Scout. Our current plan is that the change to the library home page will go live late tonight and will be announced on the blog and by email to cadets, faculty, and staff. We do not anticipate any difficulties other than the difference in search behavior on the home page. Users will no longer default to the library catalog, but will execute their search in Scout (which includes the catalog).

Thanks to our teams who have been working to bring this up. Coder-extraordinaire Justin has done a great job wrangling another system into something workable. Christine has helped guide our overall process all the way through from our wishlist to vendor selection, to implementation. David and MPD have worked content integration (with more to come). Our communications team (Celeste, Christine, Heather, Justin, Karen, and Suzanne) have also been very helpful in walking through the look and user experience. Many folks throughout the library, especially in IGD, have also tested the system.

This is a great step forward for us in improving access to our resources. Thanks to everyone for bringing it to fruition.